


fleurir- to bloom

by spacegirlkj



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Unrequited Love, hanahaki, reminiscing when the series wasnt as hopless, takes place way long ago when they lived together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-16
Updated: 2017-12-16
Packaged: 2019-02-15 15:30:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13034124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacegirlkj/pseuds/spacegirlkj
Summary: People are temporary, he tells himself. People come and go like rainstorms, and if you care enough, you let them leave. You open the dove’s cage, let the iris live in the field.But people are selfish, and Kaneki is not yet a god.-hanahaki au





	fleurir- to bloom

**Author's Note:**

> goal before the end of 2017 is to rid my folder of all wips. heres a oneshot for a pairing that will always have my heart...

Smog sits heavy over the skyline of a city growing tall and wide. Kaneki drinks in the smoke and liquid from his glass, watches the people laugh and file on the streets between buildings so tall they are mountains. It’s foreign in a way that makes Kaneki want to gag, makes him roll his eyes and down the rest of the contents from his glass. Beside him, Tsukiyama laughs, sadistic to the core and finding pleasure in the way Kaneki grimaces when remember the things he’d rather not.

They’re sitting on the rooftop of their building, where they probably aren't allowed to be. A bottle of blood wine sits between their thighs, night sky overhead and smog obscuring their faces like masks. Tsukiyama tells stories and chides when Kaneki doesn't listen, smiles charming without trying and eyes sparkling even through the haze. He’s less plastic when he is like this, lavender hair is ruffled, his jacket discarded, and when he laughs, his entire body shakes. Champagne flutes filled with blood wine clinks softly against the bottle, and Kaneki wonders if this is what it means to be living. There is no toast, no reason behind their celebration. Kaneki tells himself that it’s hunger and nothing more.

It makes the whole thing seem a lot less sick than it is. Flutes used only of celebration, what was there to celebrate? Another day lasted, another day to beat death? Kaneki watches Tsukiyama out of the corner of his eye, feels his skin crawl. He looks soft, his edges rounded like sea glass and soapstone. Kaneki looks away— he can’t be allowed to stare like that.

“Kaneki-kun,” Tsukiyama asks, swirls his drink in his glass. “When you could eat like a human, what did you most enjoy?”

The question catches him off guard, and Kaneki stops to think before he answers. The memory of tastes beyond the ones he’s now acquainted too are tainted and fuzzy, they seem so distant, faded, like his mother’s face or the sound of Hide’s laugh.

“Chocolate,” he responds, swirling his glass. “It was bittersweet.”

Tsukiyama hums and rests his glass on his knee, popping the bottle back open with one hand.

Later that night, Kaneki stares at his ceiling, thinking about how Tsukiyama’s eyes shone under the moonlight, how he smiled so genuinely, yet so halfhearted. Paradoxical, an enigma, bittersweet. Flowers bloom in his throat like bile, and Kaneki wonders if it’s from the thought of murder or the fact that hes stopped minding the action in the first place. Desensitized. Clinical.

He’s always hated doctor’s lounges and offices, hated hospitals and the forced sterile environment. It's numbing, liminal in the same way department stores and empty highways are. Now he’s the same, stark lights in subliminal space that exists too one dimensionally. 

(If only that were true, Kaneki thinks, because he has so many layers to his issue that he’s morphed into a shape with infinite sides.)

He drinks in the smell of white roses, lilies and iris, because that is the scent of Tsukiyama in the next room over. Kaneki turns onto his stomach, forces his eyes shut and wills every thought out of his head. 

_you need to sleep you need to sleep you need to_

He chants. There is a buzzing noise at the back of his head, whispering something indistinguishable in his ear. Kaneki wishes it were a bug he could pull out or flick off, but the thought proves itself imagined when he reaches and finds nothing there.

He tries counting sheep:

_1000, 993, 986, 979—_

It doesn't work.

Instead, Kaneki counts the petals when he coughs up flowers that had started to grow in his lungs whenever he thinks of the man with carnations tied in his hair. Iris, blue soaked red from the blood in his throat. 

In the morning, he wakes with the sun, sky shining pink over a skyline of polluted buildings. Smog hazes the air and pales the colour, and yet it is so warm compared to him. He feels chills race up his spine, and when he looks in the mirror, there are bags under his eyes in the same shade of violet as the irises he threw up. The petals still litter the floor, and Kaneki makes no move to clean them up.

He’s pale, sickly pale, he notices. He rarely goes out in daylight, and when he does, it isn’t long enough that the sun can let his skin bronze beyond its nature melanin. The veins under his skin are blue and visible up and down his arms, across his shoulders. Kaneki grimaces, and goes to find a sweater.

Hinami is in the kitchen, kicking her feet against the counter as she sits atop. A book is in one hand, a highlighter in the other. She is smiling down, as if she does not have a care in the world.

(That isn’t true, but Kaneki wishes it could be.)

He doesn't know where Tsukiyama is, and doesn't feel the need to ask as he tucks his hands in his pockets and leaves through the door, mumbling an explanation as it shuts behind him. His thoughts still swarm, but they are muted and untouchable, a mirrored image made close by illusion of space that doesn't exist. Kaneki wants to shut his eyes and sleep, because he sways when he stands, but he can’t bring himself to do anything but walk down the city streets, eyes not meeting any who passed.

The wind blows through him as his feet carry him towards a destination he faintly remembers. A young boy passes him, tugging on his mother’s sleeve with a huge smile on his face. The child bumps into him, looking up momentarily to apologize. Kaneki offers a smile to him and his mother, passing by with just a wave.

_People are temporary_ , he tells himself. _People come and go like rainstorms, and if you care enough, you let them leave. You open the dove’s cage, let the iris live in the field._

But people are selfish, and Kaneki is not yet a god.

It’s not the first time he wonders if there is beauty in pain, wonders if the roots that tangle in his ribcage are one part pain and two parts beautiful, wonder if it’s worth it to strangle every last breath for the vision of loveliness. He is alien in his body, is organs not his own and hydrangeas falling from lips stained with blood not his own. He once hated to consume, to take and take and take. He once feared he’d grow into his mother’s hands, that he’d become what she was to him and take her role as a phantom slap of leather on smooth skin.

Now he eats to make himself stronger and washes flesh down with the taste of guilt in his mouth. If he chokes on petals and spits up roots when he arrives home, Tsukiyama does not say a thing. He looks up from his book and tilts his head and stands, so close to Kaneki that his heart begins to seize.

_“La vie avant qu'elle ne fleurisse,”_ Tsukiyama purrs, tucking white hair behind Kaneki’s ear. His nails linger on the skin of his jaw— they’re long, painted periwinkle. Kaneki’s pulse quickens. 

“I don’t understand,” Kaneki responds, and his voice is too quiet, too soft for his liking. Tsukiyama is a tease, is a flirt, will twist these words and pull blush to his cheeks.

He doesn’t. Instead, he casts his eyes downwards in a way more melancholy than seductive, gnaws on the corner of his mouth. Kaneki can see the pedal of his teeth, stained with something red— wine? Lipstick? Blood? He’ll never be certain unless he asks, unless he tastes.

“You will, one day,” Tsukiyama tells him, those fingers slipping down his neck to rest as his collarbone. Their eyes meet for a half second before he turns away.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr at spacegaykj, feel free to request! kudos and comments are appreciated!


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